Friday, June 29, 2012

... "The United States is the only Western nation in which our rulers invoke the Constitution for the purpose of overriding it – or, at any rate, torturing its language beyond repair."

... Like Nelson contemplating the Danish fleet at the Battle of Copenhagen, the Chief Justice held the telescope to his blind eye and declared, "I see no ships."

If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, but a handful of judges rule that it's a rare breed of elk, then all's well. The Chief Justice, on the other hand, looks, quacks and walks like the Queen in Alice In Wonderland: "Sentence first – verdict afterwards."

... in attempting to pass off a confiscatory penalty as a legitimate tax, Roberts inflicts damage on the most basic legal principles.

... quibbling over whose pretzel argument is more ingeniously twisted – the government's or the court's – is to debate, in Samuel Johnson's words, the precedence between a louse and a flea. ...

Sunday, June 24, 2012

A rabid leftist partisan by the name of David Climenhaga is one of 22 complainants to the CBSC about Ezra Levant's "Chinga tu madre" insult to a Chiquita Banana VP. According to Climenhaga's post at rabble.ca the CBSC has advised him that a new complaint (about Ezra's "Chinga tu madre" insults to the CBSC) has been referred to the CRTC.

“[N]othing less than a disaster for the planet,” declared Nnimmo Bassey, Nigerian poet and chair of Friends of the Earth International. “[A]n epic failure,” claimed Kumi Naidoo, Greenpeace International executive director. ‘[A] colossal waste of time,” chimed in Jim Leape, international director-general of World Wildlife Fund.

An umbrella group of NGOs bemoaned the official text’s lack of mention of “planetary boundaries, tipping points or planetary carrying capacity,” the very shibboleth’s of radical environmentalism’s zero-sum thinking.

Significantly, the mother and father of sustainable development, Gro Harlem Brundtland and Maurice “Chairman Mo” Strong, carped — or should that be gro-aned and mo-aned — from the Rio sidelines.

... Canada should be justly proud of being in the vanguard of this return to balance both via its withdrawal from Kyoto and the environmental provisions of Bill C-38, which do not seek to trash safeguards — as alarmists have suggested — but to eliminate duplication, bureaucratic overreach, and the potential for sheer obstructionism.

Kent agreed with the fossil-award nominators, however, that Canada does not want to discuss funding for the green economy. ... "... There are some countries that would like Rio to be a pledging conference for wealth transfer," the minister said. ...

Saturday, June 16, 2012

In theory at least Oregon State University (OSU) seems to be a bastion of academic freedom, diversity, and tolerance. ... But it is all a fairy tale, because OSU operates under a politically correct regimen that dictates what is acceptable to say and what is not. Transgressors who dare to be different are eventually weeded out so that the campus maintains its ideological purity.

... We learned over the weekend that chemist Nickolas Drapela, PhD has been summarily fired from his position as a “Senior Instructor” in the Department of Chemistry. The department chairman Richard Carter told him that he was fired but would not provide any reason. Subsequent attempts to extract a reason from the OSU administration have been stonewalled.

... Five years ago, Oregon State Climatologist George Taylor went around quietly saying that he was not a believer. Then Governor Ted Kulongoski and many faculty at OSU including Dr. Jane Lubchenco made life impossible for Taylor, and he retired. (Lubchenco is now head of NOAA in the Obama administration.) Under those currently in charge, OSU climate research has grown to be a huge business, reportedly $90 millionper year with no real deliverables beyond solid academic support for climate hysteria.

... My friend Jonathan Kay may or may not describe himself as a republican, but he’s certainly taking the republican position vis-à-vis my friend Andrew Coyne, who (whether or not he would describe himself as a monarchist) dazzles on the tightrope as he demonstrates a loyal subject’s fealty and affection for a hereditary monarch. Kay calls Coyne’s declaration for the monarchy “feudalism lite” and for the concept of royal descent coins ... the enviable word “crotchocracy.”As if anticipating Kay, “A constitutional order founded on love strikes me as no bad thing,” Coyne writes, conflating the high wire of real, DNA-testable monarchy with the safety net of constitutionality that protects plucky Alice in Wonderland in case the monarch turns out to be the Red Queen. Spectacular, but don’t try it at home.

... Another friend who has written on the subject is John O’Sullivan. He points out that “political reforms work better when they follow the grain of historical experience.” This is very likely true. It means that I’m wrong about not trying Coyne’s high wire act of monarchy conducted over constitutionality’s safety net at home. That’s exactly where we should try it — and so we have, for the past 60 years.

Friday, June 8, 2012

The Rio+20 Earth Summit on Sustainable Development, which starts in two weeks, will be a farce, even if everybody keeps a straight face. The grand UN-based system conceived to co-ordinate the activities of all mankind has proved utterly unsustainable, a dysfunctional mess that generates nothing but endless meetings, agendas and reports.

That sustainable development would inevitably collapse under its own contradictions was inevitable. What is fascinating is why every country on Earth — including Canada — would earnestly have committed to a concept hatched by a cabal of ardent socialists. ....

... Canada’s “national submission” to the Rio conference is yet another model of bureaucratic pretension and political hypocrisy, in which an ostensibly right-wing government calls for more comprehensive and effective progress toward the socialist dreams of Brundtland and Rio ’92. ...

Wednesday, June 6, 2012

Using scientific theories, toy ecosystem modeling andpaleontological evidenceas a crystal ball, 21 scientists, including one from Simon Fraser University, predict we’re on a much worse collision course with Mother Nature than currently thought. [Oooh! "scientific theories", "toy modeling", "evidence", "21 scientists". How can we doubt it?]In 'Approaching a state-shift in Earth’s biosphere', a paper just published in Nature, the authors, whose expertise span a multitude of disciplines, suggest our planet’s ecosystems are careering towards an imminent, irreversible collapse.

... says Mooers. “My colleagues who study climate-induced changes through the earth’s history are more than pretty worried. In fact, some are terrified.”

Run for the hills!

These clowns never give up. The predictions of doom are sounding ever more panicky.

JR on:

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"It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their consciences." -- C. S. Lewis